Sitting in our new house in Kensington, watching the sun stream through the windows and warm the hardwood floor, it occurs to me that … I’m happy. Not that everything is perfect. I still have multiple myeloma, and it’s likely to recur in 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 or “x” unknown number of years, and it might eventually kill me. But that aside, things are good. Suzie and I both […]
Thanks to the technology of orthotic insoles and the wonderful, soft, cushioned, flat artificial soccer surface atSchopflin Fields, I’ve been able to start running again, after a layoff of about 15 years. Yes, it is true that it’s a slight stretch to call what I do “running,” but I am consistent if not very quick, and I do finish off with a series of sprints that get me going faster than […]
Twenty-five years ago today, I married the most wonderful woman in the world. The best Mom, the best friend and companion, the best travelling partner, a secure, calm, commonsense counterweight to my craziness and insecurity. I thought I loved her as much as I could twenty-five years ago, but I was wrong. My love for her, my respect, appreciation, and admiration for her as a person and a professional, my […]
A vivid memory of an otherwise ordinary winter’s night in Burlington, Iowa when I was 16: It was early evening, completely dark. It was snowing but the wind was calm. Large heavy snowflakes were falling from a low sky. It was still and quiet; between the squeaking sound of each footstep in the fallen snow, I could almost hear the sound of the descending flakes landing. The streetlight was surrounded […]
A rhetorical question but, as you’ll see after a short techno-rant, one that opens a door into a basic truth about the world. For an older guy, I’m pretty tech savvy — early internet adopter (Usenet, anyone?), longtime Linux user (and reformed distro jumper), Python/machine learning dabbler. So the fact that the Windows operating system is still, after how many years now (well Windows 95 was a big thing, remember, […]
I golfed today for the first time since I’d broken my arm. I had to be half talked in to going to the very pleasant, pretty, and laid back Ponderosa Golf Course in Truckee. Not without some trepidation did I approach the first tee, both because it had been well over a year and a half since I’d golfed and, more importantly, because I feared screwing up my arm if […]
Today was my first day back on my bike riding in the “real world,” as opposed to riding inside on the trainer, since my accident on July 3. For a long time, I couldn’t ride without risking hurting my arm if I fell, but lately I’ve been putting off riding out of what I now understand was just pure fear. An odd fear, not one that I was even conscious […]
Those who know me know I’m not a huge movie fan, but I do watch movies in French (some from Netflix, but mostly on TV5 Monde). This weekend Suzie and I went to the Rialto to see a French movie called Séraphine. Based on the remarkable and true story of the French artist Séraphine Louis (also known as Séraphine de Senlis), the movie slowly absorbs you into the mind and […]
Left Santa Rosa at 3:00 p.m., back with Will at 7:30, not as bad as I expected, thanks to diminished August traffic. Some random observations: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the light more beautiful in San Francisco than it was today. The air was crystal clear, the buildings were bathed in a pure white light, everything stood out in extraordinary relief, like a digital photo with the saturation and […]
The bankers and the big dog finance guys are taking a huge hit in the press and in Congress right now, the large bonuses being paid to people who don’t seem to have done a lot of good for their companies recently being fodder for a thorough bashing. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for those on the wrong end of things right now; these are, after all, people who’ve […]